Kruso Page 6

  Ed stared out as if hypnotised, and expected the sound of a motor and with it a bare arm trying to fend off misfortune with desperate gestures.

  The sphere of light from the searchlight was rooted somewhere in the forest behind the Klausner. Sometimes, the finger rose up and pointed further out, over the open water. Ed pictured those who lived on the land opposite as they sat at dinner, shielding their eyes with their hands so as not to be blinded. During the day, when the view was clear, you could see Møn, the chalk cliffs of Møns Klint, which belonged to the Kingdom of Denmark, but of course the light could not cover the fifty kilometres and, in truth, the distance to the other shore was almost infinite. For that very reason, Ed was tempted to picture these people to himself, fantastic inhabitants of a distant planet sitting down to their evening meal … ‘It’s a dream,’ Ed whispered into the light of the rapidly sinking sun, and the new happiness suited him, if in a muted, obscure way.

  One disadvantage of his room was its proximity to the stairway and the corridor. Around midnight, a racket set in, voices and slamming doors in the servants’ quarters, all of it introduced by the whine of the spring being stretched, a noise he found painful because it reminded him of Matthew and his soft, hurt cry just before Ed jumped (hadn’t jumped). Then steps, the sound of feet, exhausted breathing at the top of the stairs. Now and then, Ed had the feeling someone had stopped outside his door to listen. But that was ridiculous, and over time he got used to the commotion. He decided to pay it no attention. ‘It’s the island life, all that hustle and bustle out there. You don’t know the first thing about it,’ he whispered into the darkness. His voice was completely calm, his reflection motionless in the open casement window. He bowed his head as if he wanted to dive deeper into the eternal roar. But before the stuff of pilots began to flow, Ed took a step back. He turned on the light on his bedside table and pulled his small diary out of his travel bag, which he didn’t store in the wardrobe, because of the cockroaches. His eyes burned. As soon as he closed them, a tiny fire blazed. Don’t rub them, I shouldn’t have rubbed them, Ed thought.

  19 JUNE

  Onions again, but everything’s already much better. Need to get sunscreen, eye-drops maybe. What are esskays? Who is Crusoe? Don’t have anything in writing. Should I ask K.?

  Writing calmed Ed down. Each day had only five lines. Room for ‘Appointments and Notes’. He flipped to the previous page and wrote:

  18 JUNE

  The guy with the piss-off prayer is the ice-cream man here, bad lot. Better be careful. Dragged me out of the bar lounge. Looks like Rilke, long face, bulging eyes, and a moustache, like almost everyone else here.

  Ed thought over whether it made sense to use the five lines for that entry. Definitely not if he wanted to keep a journal recording only the most important events. On the other hand, this was the one person he had really met here since Krombach, aside from Chef Mike. Halfway through the lounge, the ice-cream man had grabbed Ed’s shirt from behind and pushed him right back out the front door in front of all the guests. Evidently, the customer toilet was taboo during opening hours. Just using the front door probably counted as an affront, Ed thought, and felt the slight again. He had been so surprised that he’d let himself be led away without any resistance — like a child; he had even apologised. He hadn’t wanted to go up to the staff floor, so that he wouldn’t give the impression he was sneaking off to his room during working hours. That was all. ‘Go shit in the goddamn sea,’ the ice-cream man had said. He wore a black velvet vest with gleaming silver buttons. Maybe he took himself for some kind of torero. Ed leafed back another page:

  17 JUNE

  The chef’s assistant doesn’t say a word, maybe mute. I’m silent too. Got my peace and quiet. The room is a gift, there’s enough to eat. Battling the onions, complete onion-frenzy!

  Sometimes his entries sounded like postcards from summer camp, but that didn’t matter. As soon as Ed wrote something of his own, with his own words, he wielded his pen against the verse hoard murmuring in his head like a planer levelling a heap, Ed thought, or cutting right through a heap. Yes, it was, in fact, more of a drilling; he wrote and drilled for something, in search of G. perhaps, or of himself, or a wide open space, a bright, windy bay where he walked along the sandy beach for hours, his mind quieted and his temples cooled, his feet washed in the fringes of the sea …

  The sound of a radio came from the floor below, voices, sometimes music, but very sporadic, wavering, interrupted by a coughing or scratching sound. Before midnight, Haydn, beautiful and mysterious in the radio’s tremulous sound, but then the din on the landing became too loud.

  Ed pulled on his clothes and slipped outside. He went down the stairs to the courtyard without making a sound and marched across the clearing and into the forest; the darkness soothed his eyes. The light was on in the dishwashing station. Someone must have forgotten to turn it off or it was left on all night. Not that unusual, Ed thought. There were houses in which one light or other was left on every night in the huge kitchen, strange really, maybe some kind of ritual, a navigation light for desolation. Ed would have liked to destroy all these lamps, to shoot them out in favour of wholesome, protective darkness — a short, sharp cry twitched in the night. Through the smeared windowpanes in the dishwashing station, he could see shapes, shadows, silhouettes. Ed scooted a bit higher up the slope. A few of the shapes almost reached the ceiling. Then they ducked and disappeared. Ed tried to make out more, but his eyes were watering again. Someone was busy with the large shapes, rubbing his hands along their outlines, up and down. He caressed them, sometimes with long, slow movements, then again with short, quick ones. Maybe to measure their size, Ed thought and felt a flood of shame. His mother had sat next to him when the tailor had pushed the tape measure and his fingers holding the tape measure into his crotch; he was thirteen years old and it was all perfectly normal. Even the shapes in the dishwashing station gradually shrank to their usual size. One had already gone out into the courtyard and was walking towards him. Ed wiped his eyes — a ghost with long, wet hair? A woman? Wrapped in a sheet? The shape flitted across the courtyard and went up the staff staircase. Matthew’s cry, the slam of the door, then another and yet another ghost; then peace returned. The desolation receded and wholesome darkness took the Klausner’s dishwashing station under its protection. Ed saw a man cross the courtyard and plunge onto the path that led down to the sea.

  KRUSO

  As he spoke, the man held his forehead gently out to the bear-horse — as if he had greeted the horse rather than Ed. He slapped the horse’s flank roughly with a firm hand, as only those who are familiar with animals do. Ed wiped the tears from his face. The man bent down slowly towards him, and Ed saw he was smiling.

  ‘Alexander Krusowitsch, most people say Kruso, a few friends call me Losh, from Alexander, that is from Alyosha, Alosha — Losh.’ Smiling, he took the little pointy from Ed’s hand and led him like a blind man up the ramp into the Klausner. Ed felt the light pressure on his forearm distinctly. Since G. (that is, for more than a year), he was no longer used to sustained touch; more precisely, he was no longer equal to it, which is why he felt almost lost when the man let him go.

  ‘Thanks,’ Ed said, looking at the ground. He couldn’t manage to say any more, and what was he thanking the man for?

  People did not think Krusowitsch was Russian, German-Russian, or Russian-German. He had longish black hair he pulled back in a ponytail when washing dishes. Because of a curl above his forehead, the hair billowed at the roots when tied back, like a limp black cockscomb. The comical aspect of this deformation was offset by the seriousness of his gaze; in any case, no one felt there was anything comical about Krusowitsch when they were facing him. His nose was chiselled and narrow, his face a soft, elongated, almost perfect oval with large cheeks, almost straight eyebrows, and a dark complexion — Krusowitsch looked more like a Venezuelan or a Colombian about to pull out his pan flute
and play a song in tune with his defiant-melancholy charm.

  The dishwashing station was a narrow, tiled extension with a dimly lit passage leading to the bar lounge and a swinging door to the kitchen. ‘Our backroom,’ Kruso said. It sounded important, as if he were trying to convey something else as well. Under the high windows were two large brown stone sinks as well as two smaller sinks made of steel. The water poured from two short rubber hoses fastened onto the taps with wire. The sinks stood next to each other in pairs (one stone sink, one metal sink), with metal tables between them. On the opposite wall were rusty shelves filled with pots, ladles, and dishes. The floor was slippery with a film of grease. The formerly reddish-brown tiles had reconciled themselves to the dirt and taken on a grey cast. A few of the tiles were broken, a few missing; the holes in the pattern had been filled with cement. A muted light fell through the windowpanes.

  ‘Here we work with our hands, our bare hands,’ Kruso announced emphatically and stretched his open hand towards Ed, as if he wanted to prove an all-encompassing innocence. But it was simply the beginning of his first session of instruction, Kruso’s first lesson. Ed saw a tangle of lines, long, thick, branching stories waiting to be read and understood, along with broad, squarish fingernails …

  ‘Show me your hands!’

  Ed complied hesitantly.

  ‘Stay like that,’ Kruso said then grabbed a soft-drink bottle from the windowsill and sprinkled some thick, whitish liquid onto the backs of Ed’s hands. ‘These aren’t a student’s hands,’ Kruso declared, and jabbed his fingers between Ed’s. He kneaded Ed’s bones so hard that Ed was a hair’s breadth from crying out. But his mouth seemed sewn shut. Nothing and no one could have made him utter a sound.

  ‘Cum, pure cum, the waiters say. And Rimbaud claims that over the years there’s never any less of it …’ Kruso smiled at him gravely. In conclusion, Kruso raised his right hand as if he wanted to swear an oath, but he simply pressed his thumb and index finger together. ‘The precision grip, you know. Thumb and forefinger suddenly meet and the ape’s transformation into man begins, long before the first word …’ Without further ado, he went up to one of the sinks and plunged his arms into the water up to his elbows. His hands swirled in a brew covered with yellow foam, and accomplished some task that he did not need to see to finish.

  While working, Kruso, who was a head taller than Ed, wore a black undershirt with the armholes and neckline cut wide open. When Kruso leaned forward, it stuck out away from his torso. The hair on his chest was very thick and his skin was tanned. A towel was wrapped around his waist like an apron. Water gleamed on his moccasins.

  The stone sinks for coarse cleaning (pots, pans, mixing bowls) and the metal sinks for lunch dishes were on his side — ‘your side,’ Kruso explained trustingly to Ed without the slightest trace of irony. Ed’s side was next to the passage to the dining room, a slightly sloping corridor, through which the waiters carried the dishes in and piled them up, often at a full run. Kruso called it the approach lane, with rules that had to be followed.

  On Kruso’s side was the sink for cutlery that must soak for as long as possible, so that then, with no intermediate step, in other words, in one single process, the cutlery could be cleaned and polished. ‘Otherwise, even you couldn’t manage it,’ Kruso said and smiled at him again. Why on earth would he try, Ed wondered, but before he had formulated the question in his mind, he felt the warmth of trust and affection spread through his chest.

  Because a normal dishtowel quickly became completely soaked and stained during the single-step process, bed linens were used instead, enormous century-old sheets and coverlets from the Klausner’s early days. The sheets’ ends were tossed over one’s shoulder or tied around one’s waist, just as Ed had seen that night in the courtyard. So cutlery sink duty was called ‘going Roman’. Romans, as Kruso pointed out, had never been liked much — only Cavallo thought Romans were ‘the tops’. Cavallo was one of the three waiters, that much Ed had understood so far.

  Kruso stayed at Ed’s side for a while, so he could explain the process better. Ed, Kruso’s student, stood next to him and tried to pay attention to everything. The master fished around the bottom of the sink for a second, special brush he wanted to show Ed. In his eagerness, Ed also plunged his hands into the sink. Fast as lightning, Kruso grabbed his hand and held it tight under water for a moment — evidently a reflex or a sudden cramp, a fleeting epileptic fit. Ed apologised at once.

  While Alexander Krusowitsch explained the Klausner’s various workstations (bar room, kitchen, beer garden, dishwashing station, dormitory, and dining room for the company vacation guests) and mentioned this or that name (it was impossible for Ed to remember everything), he pulled an entire stack of lunch plates out of the water with one hand. A single turn of his powerful wrist was enough to set the plates on a large, rust-covered wire rack.

  Kruso stared at the wire rack as if he had just noticed it. ‘We need to make more of those, more and maybe better ones.’ He sounded both exhausted and determined. ‘We have to take care of ourselves. Of ourselves and the pilgrims, we have to keep the entire business going for ourselves and for them. It’s our daily bread.’ Ed would have liked to agree, but that would have been ridiculous. He knew nothing about draining racks and how they are made and he had absolutely no idea whom Kruso might have meant by ‘the pilgrims’.

  He had met Kruso the day before on the beach. Ed had screwed up his courage and talked to the manager. His question was when the man on whom the final decision about his employment depended was going to return. Krombach had answered that once a year, always at this time of year, Kruso circled the island, ‘even the reedy and marshy areas — he walks through the brush, at least thirty kilometres, no problem for someone who practically grew up on a military obstacle course.’ Ed had the sense that Krombach did not want to say much more. Nevertheless, the manager lingered next to him for a moment, looking out over the water, perhaps simply not to end the conversation too abruptly. ‘It’s a kind of memorial march, in his sister’s honour. That is, we never know exactly when he’ll get back.’

  ‘Do you have any more questions, Edgar?’ It was the first time that Kruso had addressed him by name. Ed felt the warmth in his chest again. ‘No. That is, which toilet can I use, I mean, during working hours?’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Kruso murmured.

  He carefully took the soft drink bottle from the windowsill. ‘René is …’ Kruso took a deep breath. ‘Please don’t take it seriously. We all stick together here.’ He shook a little blob of the strange cream into his hand and left Ed behind.

  For the first few hours, Ed washed and scrubbed without looking up. The strips of fat cut from the meat, the food scraps mixed together, the paper napkins full of snot or blood, the ferry tickets, the pamphlets, the chewing gum, the knotted up hairbands (with a few hairs clinging to them), the cigarette butts, the vomit, the sunscreen, all the garbage on the plates that came in to the dishwashing station from the terrace, all of it was now part of his job. He looked at the bite marks in the meat: big bites, little bites, some tiny, as if made by rodents rather than humans. He looked around — he was alone. He grabbed a potato with a woman’s red-rimmed bite mark, threw it in the air, caught it and crushed it in his fist. As he did, he bared his teeth and spat the remains of an imaginary ‘Sea-Wolf’ cigar in the bin. As Kruso had shown him, he put the good scraps in various bowls and scraped the rest from the dishes into the garbage bin with a greasy piece of cardboard.

  Sometimes, it was hard to decide which scraps could be considered good. Kruso had said something incomprehensible on the subject and had not given many concrete examples. He had started talking about the pilgrims again and about their soup, possibly their sacred soup or maybe their hasty soup or both together. In the desolate echoes that filled the dishwashing station, it was all a giant soup. Now and then, there were lunch plates that came back almost untouched, with entire schnitzels
, cabbage rolls, potatoes, vegetables. Then it was easy.

  Before long Ed’s back ached. When he was sure no one was watching, he raised his hands out of the water and stretched. Some of the yellowish brew trickled into his armpits when he did so. When he stood on tiptoe, he could touch the ceiling with the brush for scrubbing the pots. The backroom, in the backroom — didn’t that mean to be on the best path?

  At first, Ed was almost dazzled by the appearance of the three waiters. He didn’t know much about gastronomy and found it astonishing that men in white shirts and black suits, men in tails, so to speak, would appear here, in the dishwashing station, right next to the garbage bin (Kruso called it the pig slop bin). It all seemed like a kind of circus or absurdist theatre where the spectators could join in; he had heard the music and the lions’ roar, and had snuck away, and now he was watching the show, his heart thumping in his chest. A vagabond hoping to escape his misery on the road, Ed thought, and for a moment keenly felt the shabbiness of his dishwater-drenched garb. He discreetly scratched himself. The greasy steam over the sinks clogged his pores.

  From noon on, Ed was inundated with dishes. Because there were never enough clean plates to cover the lunch shift, he simultaneously had to wash, dry, and place the plates into a specially made hatch to the kitchen. He worked fast but could hardly manage on his own. The waiters ran, but it was fundamentally all too much for them as well. Even so, the waiter they called Rimbaud went above and beyond, and scraped the plates he brought in himself and then tossed them into Ed’s sink for coarse cleaning. He did it with great verve and surprising deftness: the plates nosedived past Ed’s whirling hands and, a few centimetres before impact, executed a turn that could hardly be believed before finally settling on the bottom of the sink as evenly and supply as dreaming flounders. With that technique, Ed could keep both hands in the water and wash at a much higher tempo. He noticed that Rimbaud, too, observed the rule about good and less-good scraps, and the bowls gradually filled.